Friday, February 24, 2017

The EP release from James Patrick
Morgan, Art + Work = Love, is a stunning opener to Morgan’s career as something
like a musical polymath. You can’t pigeonhole him into one particular style.
Morgan has a strong enough voice to inhabit a rock musical texture, but he also
has the chops to pull of soul or R&B influenced tracks, pop songs, and
hard-charging singer/songwriter material. Despite the plethora of influences,
nothing comes across too cluttered and there’s a clarity of intent picking up
with the first track and carrying the entire release. Morgan’s vocals are
vibrant and suggest he has a strong stage presence backed up by the skills
needed to make live performances pay off. Art + Work = Love comes out of the
starting gate with a lot of heart and a little attitude and, while he alters
his approach from song to song, it never loses any of its spirit and energy
along the way.

It sets the bar high from the start.
“Expected” has overall quality that any performer, at any level, would be proud
to feature on a release. It’s jaunty groove makes it a perfect opener and
Morgan’s clearly hot to sing it. He artfully tumbles through the lyrics, never
stumbling over his phrasing, and brings home the lyric’s situation with eyebrow
arching clarity. It’s a winning track and all around charismatic. There’s a
rousing quality to “Alone” that Morgan and his collaborators play just right. The
keyboards help propel the song along at a brisk enough pace without ever
rushing its development. It’s one of Art + Work = Love’s more mainstream
moments, but it’s never so poppy that serious music fans will reject it; quite
the opposite. If anything, they will be impressed at how substantive it really
is. Melody distinguishes a lot of what Morgan does and few songs show that
better than “Sign Language”. The brief piano introduction is soon fleshed out
further by compelling drums and strong acoustic guitar playing. It’s
fascinating being able to hear glimpses in each song of its birth; it’s easy to
imagine that many of these cuts began with a single guy working out the initial
structure on acoustic between building onto it in the studio.

“Right Mistakes” may be the album’s
best song. It doesn’t have the same energy as the opener, but it’s an overall
more thoughtful and considered bit of songwriting that Morgan clearly goes all
out to elevate with his shattering vocal. The guitars working their way through
this song hold everything together musically and do so quite nicely. His cover
version of “Fly Like an Eagle” seems like a gift to his fans. He does a
fantastic job refurbishing this Steve Miller classic for a modern audience
without ever losing its connection to the original’s spirit. Despite this not
being an original, it still reveals many of the same moves making the earlier
songs so special. James Patrick Morgan is a risk taker – he isn’t afraid to
reach out for his audience and lay himself bare to connect with the crowd. This
is an EP that connects solidly with its intended listeners and should appeal to
a broad based cross section of music fans.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Dreamland
is a ten song album from Minneapolis headquartered singer/songwriter Matt
Hannah. This second album from Hannah, following up his 2014 release Let the
Lonely Fade, should raise Hannah to a place of preeminence among his
contemporaries. The album doesn’t aim to be merely some memorable hodgepodge of
different songs but, instead, is threaded together by a loose concept that
seems almost novelistic in intent. The production presents all of Hannah’s
songs in excellent fidelity and captures significant details that a less
professional job would have missed while the album’s running order seems
perfectly arranged. Hannah has really went the extra mile here; Dreamland more
than reaffirms the talents on display during his debut, but takes a step
further towards something with the potential to endure posterity’s judgment.

He
opens it up with a strong title track. Hannah’s acoustic guitar work is one of
the album’s consistent strengths and the basis of all his songwriting, but the
title track is one of its best illustrations. It’s joined at critical junctures
by wonderfully atmospheric pedal steel guitar playing that perfectly
complements Hannah’s playing. “Broken Hearts & Broken Bones” kicks off with
some hard-edged, clipped acoustic guitar before the full band comes in. It
never gets too heavy handed, but the song has a nice stomp to it and swings
like a mother. “Dandelion” is much more of a solo performance than the
preceding songs, but Hannah is a more than capable musician who can pick up a
tune single-handedly and carry it to its completion. It’s his best character
portrait on the album and the lyrics are full of delicately rendered details
that will engage listener’s imaginations. “Banks of the Mississippi” has some
electric guitar making low-key contributions near the end, but much of the song
is dominated by Hannah’s acoustic guitar.

The
guitar means a lot to the song “Set Free”. The lyrical content is quite
exceptional and Hannah really makes it go thanks to his energetic, but
tempered, delivery, but it’s the instrumental break and resulting guitar solo
that really seals the deal for this song. “The Night is My Home” has minimal
accompaniment from other instruments except for a very light of touch of
keyboards in the background. The center of the performance is Hannah’s voice
and guitar playing. It has a tender touch that makes the most of the song’s
melody without ever making things too precious. “Different Kind of Light” is a
song with intelligent lyrics and a dynamic arrangement gradually scaling upwards
in terms of musical intensity. These are the sort of dramatic shifts we usually
associate with rock songs; Hannah makes excellent use of these turns to enhance
what might have otherwise been a more delicate track. The final blast of blues
on Dreamland comes with the steel guitar opening of “Gone”. This is, in some
ways, the album’s most commercial track and has a strong musical and lyrical
hook to draw listeners in. Dreamland is one of the young year’s best releases
and transcends musical labels.

A lot of music fans dismiss the blues
as a relic of America’s musical past, a carnival of clichés recalling the
distant past without any relevance to modern music. The Righteous Hillbillies
would certainly dispute that idea. The ten songs on their fourth studio album,
Two Wheels Down a Lost Highway, are ripped from modern life and surrounded with
a vital blues rock backing that’s handled with considerable skill and isn’t
ever used as a cudgel. Instead, the band understands the slightly behind the
beat and emotive value inherent to the blues without ever pandering for the
audience’s attention. Vocalist Brent James and lead guitarist Nick Normando
stand out from the pack on many of the album’s songs, but the other three band
members are equally strong in serving this material to its maximum potential.
The band’s three preceding albums make perfect sense when hearing this new
release – rather than settling for staid invocations of the musical past,
they’ve scooped up this time-tested American art form and set squarely in the
present without any hint of irony.

The feeling of inspiration on these
tracks comes with the first song. “Rollin’” highlights drummer Barret Harvey’s
crucial role in making The Righteous Hillbillies’ engine hum. His series of
rolls throughout the track shows great timing and Nick Normando and vocalist
Brent James’ guitar work spars over the top with great spark. “Throwing Stones”
brings Normando’s slide guitar playing more to the surface and the tempo gives
it a high stepping, groovy energy that never abates. Brent James’ singing
matches that tempo in both feel and inspiration without ever laying things on
too thick. “Shake This Feeling” has a great barrelhouse roll from the start and
James’ gives a leering, entertaining vocal that makes the song all the more
enjoyable. The title song stands out from the other nine as one of the album’s
most considered tracks, full of original but blues-derived imagery that shows
off James’ songwriting talents in perhaps unexpected ways. James throws himself
head long into the long slide guitar drawl of “Down to Memphis”; in the hands
of lesser bands, this would all sound like hollow posing, but The Righteous
Hillbillies nail songs like this with total sincerity and a significant amount
of style.

“Drama Zone” has a big, sludgey blues
riff that makes everything go, but everything would be a little paler without
the sympathetic rhythm section work and another great James vocal. Two Wheels
Down a Lost Highway finishes up with “Rock Salt & Nails”. Some might expect
such an ending after the bluster and chest-beating soul preceding it, but the
effect is still strong to end this album with an understated acoustic blues.
The Righteous Hillbillies bring a lot of fire to these songs, but they harness
a variety of approaches to get this collection over. There isn’t an
unsuccessful song on this release, but it isn’t because the band aims their
sights low. Two Wheels Down a Lost Highway is a powerful effort that will
invigorate blues fans and has the potential to earn many new fans for the band.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Gone Gatsby, the fourteen song third
release from San Antonio alternative rockers The Sound of Curves, finds the
band still reliant on their unmistakable mix of vibrant guitar work, dynamics,
and vocal harmonies, but also sees them taking more risks than ever before.
These risks never run the chance of taking them off course from their customary
focus, but instead, it makes those elements stick longer and run deeper in the
listener’s consciousness. The album runs too long, there’s easily three or four
songs they could have shaved off the track listing without diluting the album’s
final affect, but even the excess material isn’t distinguished by subpar
musicianship, energy, or vocals. The band is overreaching with such an enormous
collection but, while we may not be able to praise such an overreach, longtime
music fans will be hard put to find fault with their ambition.

The ambition is evident from the
beginning. Songs like “Galaxy” bring electronic music to the fore as added
color for the band’s predominantly guitar oriented approach and it’s quite a
good match, but bringing great vocal harmonies together seals the deal. Other
songs like the title track are much more in an alternative rock vein, eschewing
the electronica influencing other tunes, and this example in particular works
as a spectacular call to arms begging for an airing in front of live audiences.
Lead guitarist Aaron Montano-Teague deserves just as much mention for the
musicality of his lead work as the twin singers Leonel Pompa and Roger Mahrer,
but Montano-Teague also brings a jagged attitude-driven edge that takes these
songs from the realm of pure alternative rock into something much more
passionate, much more on the edge. “Summer Radio”, as its title might imply, is
pure pop guitar rock energy and hinges, in part, on the vocal melodies to reach
its potential. The chorus is particularly effective and will stick in
listener’s minds long after the song has ended.

The elegiac melodic beauty of
“Josephine” stands out, even on this collection, because it is so clearly
conceived. The band clearly realized they had something a little more special
than average with this track as evidenced by the differences in its arranging
style from the other material and the surprising variations they’re able to wring
from the melody. It also elicits very passionate vocals from both Pompa and
Mahrer as further evidence of their inspiration. “London” is one of the album’s
best unexpected rockers, at least initially, until the verses come in and they
adopt a sort of art alternative rock texture that’s steps high and has a
decidedly positive tone. “Waves” has a sort of quasi-U2 sound and the band
handles that sort of airy grandeur with unexpected sophistication, taking their
typical balance of light and shadow and imbuing it with powerful inspiration.
The album’s final high point comes with “The Road” – unlike the usual song in
this vein, The Sound of Curves subverts listener’s probable expectations with a
healthy dose of electronica and an unusual arrangement that doesn’t follow the
usual parameters. There’s a little bit of everything here for listeners.
Longtime fans of The Sound of Curves will undoubtedly find much here that’s
familiar, but it’s clear that the band is attempting to push themselves into
new areas and succeeding.

About Me

Student at University of Oregon. Persuing a degree in Jornalism and Marketing. Writing Intern for Indie Music Media LLC based out of Seattle, WA. I enjoy writing music reviews that are informative, honest and positive.